Strengths-Based Home-School Collaboration to Support Children's Early Math Learning

Abstract

The value of home-school collaboration has been repeatedly touted in psychology and education (e.g., Pomerantz et al., 2007). However, impacts on learning may depend on whether home-school relationships are, in fact, truly collaborative. Indeed, the importance of educators having asset-based partnership attitudes – viewing families as partners who bring strengths to the collaboration, including knowledge, skills, and cultural capital – and the pedagogical skills to make use of these assets has become clear in the literature (McWayne et al., 2022). Yet, many questions remain around how asset-based partnership practices can be supported for teachers working with marginalized and disadvantaged families, especially around teaching early math.The present dissertation study examined preschool teachers’ and families’ uses of early math home-school collaboration kits—Family Math Kits—that were co-designed to build asset-based home-school partnerships in 24 Head Start classrooms in the Boston area. The study aimed to examine implementation testing and correlational indications of kit impact on teachers and families. Four key findings emerged. First, there were large differences in fidelity of implementation both across study sites and within study sites. While site and center leadership was likely critical to some of these differences, teacher and family focus groups also revealed both implementation challenges and opportunities that deserve future attention in the field. Second, despite variability in implementation fidelity, the kits were not only enjoyable for families, but the kits also provided meaningful early math learning opportunities (i.e., uncovering family strengths in their daily lives) that families could communicate with teachers. Third, while teachers were able to learn more about their families (i.e., family strengths) via the kits, challenges remained as to how to best utilize experiences from families in the classroom. Fourth, kits appeared to be positively associated with changes in teachers’ beliefs and attitudes such that teachers who implemented the kits with higher fidelity displayed a trend toward improved attitudes and beliefs (e.g., general pedagogical beliefs to specific beliefs around early math and home-school collaboration), especially around teachers’ math confidence. However, the use of the kits appeared to have somewhat mixed associations with family attitudes and beliefs. Taken together, these study findings underscore the importance and challenges of effective home-school collaboration for early math learning that is strengths-based.